1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer having a thermally activating apparatus of a thermally sensitive adhesive or adhering sheet formed with a thermally sensitive adhering agent layer showing nonadhering performance in normal time and manifesting adhering performance by being heated on one face of a sheet-like base member and used as, for example, a pasting label, and particularly relates to a technology of enabling to transport a short label and promoting reliability of delivery of sheet from a printing apparatus to a thermally activating apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there is known a thermally activated sheet (for example, printing media formed with a coating layer including a thermally activating component on a surface thereof such as, for example, thermally sensitive adhering sheet) as one of sheets pasted on commodities, which is used in a wide field of pasting, for example, POS sheet of a good product, physical distribution/delivery sheet, medical sheet, baggage tag, display sheet of bottles, cans and the like.
The thermally sensitive adhering sheet is constituted by respectively forming a thermally sensitive adhering agent layer showing nonadhering performance in normal time and manifesting adhering performance by being heated on one face of a sheet-like base member and a printable face on other face thereof.
There has been proposed a printer for the thermally sensitive adhering sheet which is provided with a thermally activating apparatus for heating a thermally sensitive adhering agent layer by bringing a head having a plurality of resistors (heat generating elements) provided on a ceramic base plate as a heat source into contact with a thermally sensitive adhering label such as a thermal head utilized as a printing head of a thermal printer (Patent Literature 1).
An explanation will be given here of a general constitution of a printer for a thermally sensitive adhering sheet in reference to a thermal printer P2 of FIG. 14.
The thermal printer P2 of FIG. 14 is constituted by a roll containing unit 20 for holding a thermally sensitive adhering label 21 in a tape-like shape wound in a roll-like shape, a printing unit 30 for printing on the thermally sensitive adhering label 21, a cutter unit 40 for cutting the thermally sensitive adhering sheet 21 into a label having a predetermined length, and a thermally activating unit 50 as a thermally activating apparatus for thermally activating a thermally sensitive adhering agent layer of the thermally sensitive adhering label 21.
The printing unit 30 is constituted by a printing thermal head 32 having a plurality of heat generating elements 31 constituted by a plurality of comparatively small resistors arranged in a width direction thereof to be able to carry out dot printing, a printing platen roller 33 brought into press contact with the printing thermal head 32 (heat generating element 31) and the like. In FIG. 14, the printing platen roller 33 is rotated in the clockwise direction and the thermally sensitive adhering label 21 is transported to the right side.
The cutter unit 40 is for cutting the thermally sensitive adhering label 21 printed by the printing unit 30 by a preselected length and is constituted by a movable blade 41 operated by a drive source (not illustrated) of an electric motor or the like, and a fixed blade 42 opposed to the movable blade.
The thermally activating unit 50 is constituted by a thermally activating thermal head 52 as heating means having a heat generating element 51, a thermally activating platen roller 53 as transporting means for transporting the thermally sensitive adhering label 21, a drawing roller 54 for drawing the thermally sensitive adhering label 21 supplied from a side of the printing unit 30 to between the thermally activating thermal head 52 (heat generating element 51) and thermally activating platen roller 53 and the like. In FIG. 14, the thermally activating platen roller 53 is rotated in a direction opposed to that of the printing platen roller 33 (counterclockwise direction in the drawing) to transport the thermally sensitive adhering label 21 in a predetermined direction (right side).
[Patent Literature]
JP-A-11-79152
Meanwhile, according to the thermal printer P2 having the above-described constitution, the thermally sensitive adhering sheet is transported by three transporting means of the printing platen roller 33 of the printing unit 30, the drawing roller 54 and the thermally activating platen roller 53 of the thermally activating unit 50 and therefore, the printed sheet is cut after a front end thereof reaches the drawing roller 54. Therefore, a sheet length which can be dealt with becomes equal to or larger than a distance from a cutting position of the cutter unit 40 to the drawing roller 54. Therefore, in order to deal with a shorter sheet length, the thermally activating unit 50 needs to be proximate to the side of the cutter unit 40, however, there is a limit in shortening the distance between the thermally activating unit 50 and the cutter unit 40.